Who cares about the DLC when there is a Game of Thrones mod for CK2 ? I'm almost more excited to play the mod than the vanilla game, tbh.

Hiya,Painted_Doll.

no, only the base game

Hi Tauto .

You might want to do so with anything developed by Paradox by now. Stellaris released with forced telemetry, and going by the posts by Paradox employees they have no intention of backing out of it. Apparently the privilege of playing Paradox games should be enough to make everybody forego any claims to privacy.

Running their games firewalled without Steam running should be fine. I wouldn't count on them not working out some arrangement with Steam to get some metrics through steamapi even if the game itself is blocked, though.

Nasty development.

It's why I'm in no hurry to play new games, since more and more seem to be adding crap features like always online or this.

It's why I'm quite content here on gog! : ]

I learned to play by reading this

www.paradoxian.org:80/eu2wiki/index.php/Main_Page
which needs to be browsed via web.archive.org, since the website is gone

(seems like the forum doesn't like me posting links)

Hopefully a "complete edition" of CK2 comes out soon and gets released on GOG.

That would be great, although I think there have already been "complete editions" (plural) released. We will probably only know if an edition is truly "complete" until CK3 is announced.

That would be even better, but highly unlikely since Paradox has gone full Steam-only on its latest releases. :(

Not that unlikely. Surviving Mars did get released here recently. If i were to bet, i'd say its more unlikely due to the price point a "complete edition" would go for here. Unless they'd go for a complet'ish edition + afew themed sets of DLC packed together.

Surviving Mars is not developed by Paradox, though. Any Paradox-developed game released here has been update and DLC-complete, a status not shared by Crusader Kings 2 (along with Europa Universalis IV, Hearts of Iron IV and Stellaris).

That's very unlikely. Paradox have said outright they wouldn't consider stopping the DLC spam until they felt like making a sequel instead, and that they wouldn't start on CK 3 unless they felt it could be a big enough change compared to CK 2 (i.e. new engine among other things most likely).

As for it ever coming to GOG, I'd say that's even more unlikely. They've given up on DRM-free and become wedded to Steam after CK 2's release, because according to them the DRM-free version they released alongside the Steam one didn't have enough sales (around 5% IIRC) to make it worthwhile. It wasn't that surprising considering said DRM-free version was exclusive to Gamersgate, which isn't exactly the most popular store ever, but whatever.
Anyway, ever since then, they've pretty much tied the multiplayer and modding of all their games to Steamworks, and I'd guess Paradox wouldn't consider it worthwhile to change that and do a Galaxy version instead.

Yeah, there are two Paradoxes: Paradox Development Studio is a developer and Paradox Interactive is the publisher. All PDS games are published by PI, but PI also publishes other games. The core Paradox games, formerly known for being extremely difficult to learn and targeted to hardcore history/strategy fans, and now infamous for the DLC bloat, are the ones developed by PDS.

Not only that: if someone even dares to suggest to have a DRM version of a Paradox game in the Paradox community forums, they will be accused by the majority of other users of ludites at best, and of pirates at worst.

I'm confused. You mean DRM-free version don't ya?